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SUGGESTION 
INSTEAD OF MEDICINE 



11 

SUGGESTION 
INSTEAD OF MEDICINE 



BY / 

CHARLES M. BARROWS 



BOSTON 

No. 142 Massachusetts Ave. 

PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR 
I9OO 



Copyright ipoo 

by 
C. M. Barrows 

fit 114 






Library of Corii/r*** 
H't COPIES ftil£IV£D 

OCT 15 1900 

ftpyngM «ttrv 

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OCT 22 iSOU 



Press of 
George H. Ellis, Boston 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

I. Introduction 5 

II. The- Physical Element 24 

III. The Psychical Element 37 

IV. Cases 54 

V. List of Diseases 88 



SUGGESTION 
INSTEAD OF MEDICINE 



INTRODUCTION. 

If psycho-therapeutics were understood 
this monograph would be an impertinence ; 
but, until the umpire arrives who can settle 
the questions in dispute, any explanation ad- 
vanced in good faith may challenge attention. 

Psychologists know a great deal more to- 
day about the faculties and functions of a 
human brain than the wisest scientists did 
a quarter of a century ago. Still, it must be 
admitted that the relations of mind to mind, 
the possible control of bodily activities and 
states by mental power, and the meaning and 
mechanism of " suggestion " constitute a dark 
continent, of which we possess very little 
accurate information. When we set our- 
selves seriously to the task of clearing away 
the confusion and mystery which veil the 
subject; when, appreciating the difficulties 
to be met, we ask what the peculiar transac- 
tions between healer and patient mean, — we 
find our stock of trustworthy knowledge ex- 
ceedingly small. 

Perhaps we have not gone to work in the 
right way. Perhaps we have reared our 
structure on a foundation unsupported by 
proof. It may be that too many statements 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

and conclusions have been accepted uncriti- 
cally, merely because it never occurred to 
any one that they ought to be questioned. 
Whatever the reason may be, it cannot be 
claimed that expounders of the arcana have 
made much headway; nor are we of the 
laity, who feel a deep interest in the issue 
and have as good a right to ask questions as 
anybody else, greatly enriched by their labors. 
Suppose we try another way. Suppose we 
leave the metaphysical aspects to those who 
are able to deal with them, decline for the 
time being propositions founded solely on 
faith, — our own faith or faith in somebody's 
else faith, — and undertake to carry on our 
investigations by the method of science, which 
is neither more nor less than the stanch old 
method of common sense armed with the 
weapons of the times. This resolve will re- 
quire us to approach the unknown from the 
standpoint of the known, and reduce the 
problems encountered to their lowest terms 
before trying to solve them. If the proposal 
is accepted, the course to pursue may be 
briefly outlined thus : Consider whether re- 
gaining lost health by psychical means is the 
same thing as getting well by the aid of 
medicine. Separate, as far as possible, things 

6 



How to Study the Subject 

psychical from things physical in the phe- 
nomena discussed. Decide what part the 
patient has in this unique transaction, and 
under which of the two classes of events his 
experience falls; then examine the healer's 
part in the same way. Determine the mean- 
ing and province of suggestion in therapeutics. 
Finally, make a careful study of actual prac- 
tice of psychical treatment, — its successes and 
failures, — and learn from reliable sources 
what diseases have been cured in this manner. 

This particular investigation is a beginning. 
It will be a partial survey of the field ; for it 
is not the purpose of the present writer to 
include in this small volume an account of 
any work but his own, with which he feels 
intimately acquainted. The cases that have 
been under his care deeply interest him ; and, 
by the aid of what psychological and medical 
studies have taught him, he now offers to 
conduct the reader along the path that his 
own steps have traced, and answer as well as 
he is able the questions that arise. 

A psychical cure is not a simple but a 
complex event. The elemental facts are of 
two kinds, and fall under two quite disparate 
categories. Sickness is a physical experience, 
and recovery a bodily change. Such treat- 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

ment, on the contrary, belongs definitively 
not to the world of matter but to the world 
of mind. This distinction is fundamental, 
and, when clearly perceived, divests the sub- 
ject of much perplexity and confusion. 

Being sick and getting well consist of 
bodily states and changes in contrast with 
another less common state called health ; and 
mental healers are correct in asserting this 
truth. Apparent exceptions may often be 
met with, and medical works recognize 
diseases of the mind as well as of the body. 
The condition of the insane seems to dispute 
what has just been said ; and the belief once 
prevailed, and is still held to some extent, 
that inmates of asylums for such unfortunates 
usually enjoy exceptionally good health. But, 
truly speaking, we know nothing of the 
action of mind apart from matter which is 
the condition of its manifestation. Psychol- 
ogists are very positive on this point. The 
mind functions through its organ, the brain. 
When that structure is sound, the mental 
processes are sane ; when that organ is suf- 
fering from disease, these processes are dis- 
turbed. This view does not imply that the 
brain generates or " secretes " thought. It 
simply affirms the well-attested law that per- 



Definition of Disease 

feet manifestation demands a good medium 
to act through. 

There are a number of other popular 
fallacies about diseases which it may be well 
to dispose of before we proceed. It is a 
common laic notion that they are some sort 
of animate intruders which invade the system 
from without, set up shop there, so to say, 
and carry on a destructive business, sui 
generis, to the annoyance and peril of the 
patient. Another popular belief is that the 
various ills that flesh is heir to are malign 
obsessions. It is quite safe to add that the 
scientific view of the matter is somewhat 
different. 

When we are well, all the bodily organs 
are sound, and perform their respective func- 
tions in normal fashion. Then we enjoy a 
sense of general well-being called euphoria. 
This constitutes the norm ; and every de- 
parture from this standard of health is disease, 
in the medical sense. Folks often imagine 
that the modern germ theory considers most 
maladies to be ready-made commodities im- 
ported into the body ; but the words " con- 
tagion " and " infection " do not mean this. 
The discoveries which have shed so much 
light on this obscure question show that not 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

the living microbes, but the chemical products 
which they manufacture out of materials 
existing in the system, are the immediate 
causes of infection. Poisons which make 
havoc in human anatomy are in excellent 
health. The noxious bacilli which thrive on 
debilitated tissue are themselves well and 
" full of lusty life." In a paper read before 
the American Association of Scientists, in 
1900, the author said that "a microbe enter- 
ing a healthy animal body, whether by acci- 
dent or with malice prepense, stands about as 
good a chance of doing mischief as a mouse 
in a tight room surrounded by a dozen hun- 
gry cats, because the body in health is 
safeguarded against such encroachments." 
Broadly speaking, diseases may be traced to 
mal-nutrition and changes of bodily structure ; 
and on this basis pathologists construct their 
intricate theories, as the nautilus builds his 
shell. And this statement is founded on a 
general law which we must briefly notice. 

It is one of the cardinal dogmas of biology 
that the structure of every living being is 
passing through a continuous transformation 
during the whole term of its existence ; that 
each particular change which befalls it, 
whether healthful or morbific, is part and 

10 



Nature is the Healer 

parcel of one unified corporeal history. Apply- 
ing the logic of this broad doctrine, all diseases 
are included in this experience as phases of 
the cosmic process called evolution^ — tempo- 
rary disturbances in a stream of continuous 
change by which the life of to-day hastens to 
become the larger life of to-morrow. 

It was this scientific view, in distinction 
from common opinion, that Dr. Bernheim 
took when he wrote : " Diseases are cured, 
when they are cured, by their natural biological 
evolution. Ordinary therapeutical methods 
consist in putting the organism in a condition 
such that restitutio ad integrum may take 
place. We suppress pain, we modify func- 
tion, we let the organ rest, we calm the 
fever, we retard the pulse, we induce sleep, 
we encourage secretion and excretion; and, 
by thus acting, we allow Nature, the healer, 
to accomplish her work." 

We may be sure that this noted French 
expert of the great hospital at Nancy did not 
underrate his own profession or credit to 
Nature more than her due. His meaning is 
unmistakable. The real healer is a native 
power within the patient. Drugs are only 
ancillary. The physician is a servant who 
exercises his skill to clear the path of Nature 

ii 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

to her work. Having done his part, he 
leaves it to Nature to evolve health by means 
of biological changes that are always going 
on in the system. 

This recuperative action which physicians 
recognize is centralized under another name. 
It is well known that all living structure, 
animal or vegetable, possesses this instinctive 
power of self-recovery. It is a form of 
spontaneous, plastic energy, which, acting 
through the proper neural channels, resists 
disease, tends to arrest its progress, repair 
the damage done, and compensate the bodily 
losses sustained. This inherent tendency of 
the sick to get well is known to physicians 
as vis medicatrix naturce. Common people say 
it is nature ; and, in reverent language, men 
name it spirit or God. Dr. J. Mitchell 
Bruce, of Charing Cross Hospital, London, 
said recently, while reviewing the progress of 
medicine : " We are now able to appreciate 
as never before the constructive factor which 
takes the forms of repair and convalescence. 
Just as the body possesses provisions for re- 
sisting the causes of disease, so it possesses 
provisions for arresting its beginnings . . . 
quite spontaneously ; that is, without the help 
of the surgeon or physician." Elsewhere in 

12 



The Recuperative Factor 

the same address he refers to this natural 
faculty as a " recuperative factor " making 
" spontaneous attempts at recovery." 

The intelligent use of drugs as medicine is 
to reach and evoke the faculty of self-help — 
this vis medicatrix — just when and where it 
is needed; and the essential meaning of 
therapeutics is to summon and concentrate 
this remedial force on the obstacle to be over- 
come. The locomotive engineer soon learns 
how many pounds of steam are required to 
keep his train moving at a given rate of speed 
along the levels of the track ; but, when there 
is a grade to be climbed, the pressure on the 
driving-wheels must be increased or the train 
will " slow." In some such way the vital 
energy of the body may be conceived of. A 
stream of given dynamic ability is adequate 
to supply the organism in ordinary health; 
but morbid conditions increase resistance, 
which nature must overcome with a stream 
of greater intensity directed to the seat of 
obstruction. Indeed, this is precisely what 
takes place in the system in cases of special 
need. When unusual demands are made on 
the digestive organs or the brain, an increased 
supply of blood is sent to the overtaxed 
structure. When the flesh has been hurt, 

13 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

nature sets up a special process of healing by 
means of inflammation. The blood flows 
faster toward the injured part, the blood- 
vessels dilate, corpuscles and fluids transude, 
carrying the material to form the plasma from 
which the hurt is repaired. A special ac- 
tivity occurs during the knitting of a broken 
bone, and nature deposits along the fracture 
the cement which unites the sundered frag- 
ments. Even more interesting is the recent 
discovery that nature makes spontaneous 
provision for combating the harmful work 
of microbes which enter the system. In 
certain lower forms of animal life, vis medica- 
trix has a more far-reaching control over the 
organism than in man. If the eft lose his 
tail, a new one sprouts out and takes its 
place ; for the loss of a claw the maimed 
lobster is compensated with another. Vege- 
table structures survive the severest mutila- 
tion. The lawn-mower clips the grass- 
blades and other living stocks time and again 
in the course of a summer ; but fresh ones 
shoot up as often from the bleeding stumps, 
and grow as bravely as ever. The gardener 
knows, to his cost, that, the more he tears 
and roots up the vicious quitch-grass, the 
more vigorously does it flourish. 

14 



Province of the Doctor 

If, then, the;sick have power in themselves 
to evolve a cure, what need is there of a 
doctor ? Why not leave Nature alone to do 
as she pleases ? The doctor's presence in 
the community and the sign on his office 
door advertise the tyranny of civilization over 
wild instinct, and the loss out of human 
consciousness of a priceless animal power. 
Our pithecoid ancestors may have been able 
to make instinctive i self-help available ; but 
their puny offspring, proud of big brains, ac- 
quired culture, and .scientific skill, cannot 
command this native/faculty at their need, 
and dare not trust Nature to be their sole 
healer. So Mother Necessity, in pity of 
human helplessness, invented the doctor,— 
a clumsy contrivance, to begin with, like the 
first sewing-machine and bicycle, but gradually 
refined and improved, until his gracious ser- 
vices are indispensable. Dr. Bernheim assures 
us that he owes a real duty to his fellow- 
beings, to put ailing organism in a condition 
such that remedial changes may take place. 
His relation to the power that cures is like 
that of an electrician, who is also a servant 
of the agent which supplies the force with 
which he deals. By patiently studying the 
problems that arise, this skilled artificer learns 

i5 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

the conditions on which the subtle fluid is 
pleased to flow, constructs his apparatus and 
circuit; and nature rewards his fidelity by 
flashing the potent current along his wires, 
carrying his message, lighting his lamp, and 
drawing his car. But it is the energy of 
lightning that does the work; he by his 
skill simply puts the mechanism in condition 
such that the desired events may take place. 
Medical men contend that they by their 
art remove obstacles and help nature perform 
her curative work. This seems to imply that 
vis medicatrix is often too feeble to evolve 
health without help. Well, if vis medicatrix 
alone be unable to work a cure, while nature 
and a doctor do it acting together, one of two 
conceivably possible results must have been 
produced by their combined efforts. Either 
the physician by his art infuses additional 
power or he merely evokes by an imperative 
summons inherent recuperative energy which 
was dormant in the patient. And why should 
not this organic faculty of man be, like other 
forms of observed energy, sometimes kinetic 
and at other times merely potential ? as, when 
a watch is wound, the spring acts, slowly 
uncoils, and the hands move ; but some ob- 
struction is liable to clog the wheels at any 

16 



Psychical Help 

moment and hold the power abeyant. In 
our absolute inability to prove the truth of 
any theory, it may be the part of wisdom to 
adopt that which offers a plausible working 
basis. 

Thus far have we considered the thing to 
be done, and made sufficient comment, per- 
haps, on the medical method of treatment. 
It remains to explain a mode of reaching the 
same result by a different path. We seek 
direct access to the instinctive, plastic powers 
of the patient's organism, not through his 
stomach, but through his brain. Drugs act 
slowly through the blood currents. We 
would evoke the energy of self-help more in- 
timately and quickly by psychical appeals to 
the nerve centres. 

The one inclusive name for different forms 
of such treatment is Suggestion. This term 
is not altogether a good one, but convenient 
because it is the vogue. It was brought into 
use by physicians who practised hypnotism in 
their treatment ; and now, in the language of 
the new school, every encouraging phrase that 
doctors utter to their patients, every persuasive 
or mandatory statement they make, their office 
furnishings, the odor of drugs, — all these are 
"suggestions." In its new use the word has 

17 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

come to be an elastic verbal blanket to cover 
a group of artifices by which hypnotic prac- 
titioners seek to affect their patients. From 
the many queer functions ascribed to it, one 
might easily believe the word to be charged 
with occult meaning, like the cabal of Jewish 
rabbins. This, of course, is juggling with 
a good old-fashioned vocable, whose magic 
potency was never suspected until in the 
name of science it was forced into such 
questionable notoriety. But no sensible per- 
son will fail to discern that calling certain 
processes suggestion explains nothing, and is 
a confession of ignorance. 

As already intimated, " hypnotic sugges- 
tion " holds the field to-day, and is exten- 
sively practised by medical men, especially in 
Europe. Its crude form was known as 
" mesmerism " ; but in recent years, in the 
hands of educated, skilful operators, its pos- 
sibilities have been developed and the process 
refined, until it has become, as Dr. Tuckey 
remarks, u merely a psychical preparation or 
vehicle." And the same authority indorses 
the opinion of Bernheim, — that hypnotism 
itself has no curative force, and its induction 
depends entirely upon the " volition and co- 
operation of patients, and cannot be achieved 

iS 



Hypnotism not Essential 

without these." Such statements mark a 
tendency, on the part of those whose ex- 
perience and study entitle them to an opinion, 
to make less and less of the hypnotic trance, 
and to ascribe the efficacy of their treatment 
wholly to suggestion. As long ago as 1893 
a committee, chosen by the Society for Psy- 
chical Research to investigate the claims of 
mind cure, faith cure, and the miracles of 
Lourdes, said in their published report, " The 
great hypnotic physicians are now disclaiming 
special powers, maintaining that hypnotic sleep 
is ordinary sleep, and that there is nothing in 
hypnotism but the name" In discussing the 
mechanism of verbal suggestion such as 
hypnotizers use, Mr. F. W. H. Myers ex- 
plains the possible forms it may take, then 
adds, u None of these four possible forms 
of suggestion absolutely needs the hypnotic 
trance," as a preparation. Again, in 1898, 
this same eminent student and expounder of 
the phenomena of suggestion and hypnotism 
said, in an address before the British Medical 
Association, " The main consensus of living 
hypnotists declares that hypnotic phenomena 
are due to suggestion almost or quite alone." 

It must not be inferred from these signifi- 
cant quotations that the practice of hypnotism 

19 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

for therapeutical purposes is likely to fall into 
desuetude ; and it would be quite unfair to 
conclude that physicians of established repu- 
tation, who have used it with undoubted suc- 
cess, now find it unnecessary. For to them 
hypnotic suggestion is the bird in the hand 
already trained to obey their call, while sug- 
gestion without hypnotism is the bird in the 
bush whose merits they have not tested. But 
these and similar declarations favor the belief 
that the " hypnotic trance " is induced by 
suggestions made to the patient when he is 
wide awake and in a normal condition, so 
that hypnosis is not a necessary condition of 
effective suggestion. Furthermore, they deny 
the claim often made that hypnosis is in and 
of itself curative, and imply that the recu- 
perative value of the method belongs exclu- 
sively to the suggestion. These just con- 
clusions of men best qualified to decide should 
certainly dispose fair-minded readers to admit 
that the useful results of such treatment may 
be realized, unmixed with the enchantments 
of a spell which enslaves the will and robs 
the patient of the power of choice. And, in 
the opinion of hypnotists, what kind of sug- 
gestions will take effect when made to patients 
who are wide awake ? Dr. Sidis' answers 

20 



Talk does not Cure 

that verbal suggestions will ; and the fact that 
the trance itself seems to be induced by such 
means adds force to the claim. But what is 
the nature of these verbal appeals to which 
patients are said to yield such ready obedience ? 
They consist of talk. The operator plies the 
sick man with a continuous stream of asser- 
tions and commands, which, of course, he 
has no power to enforce. Common sense 
would decide that the alleged cause is not 
equal to the effect. It is hard to make one- 
self believe that such vocal importunity can 
be the real cause of cures which are undis- 
puted, — that mere talk from a physician, even 
though he make his lips u the faucet to let 
loose a wash of words," could reduce fever 
temperature to normal, shed sleep around the 
surgeon's knife and the dentist's forceps, abate 
the agony of neuralgic pain, or abolish a 
morbid growth. Diseased organism does not 
so respond to the sound of a human voice. 

Seriously, there is no good reason for 
thinking that recuperative changes in the 
system are produced by empty words, — by 
a form of appeal which, taken at its face value, 
has no more power to evoke vis medicatrix 
natura than the witches' song in " Macbeth " 
to summon the u black spirits." Both science 

21 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

and common sense must protest that the real 
agent in the case is a deeper psychical appeal 
of which the verbal utterances are only sym- 
bols,— a concomitant message from another 
stratum of the operator's consciousness which 
passes unnoticed to the brain of the patient. 
If it be such, then in " hypnotic suggestion " 
we have to do with the same method of cure 
that is set forth in the pages that follow, — 
a method in which no trance preparation is 
required. 

Having adopted the term " Suggestion " 
as, on the whole, the most suitable name for 
what he does, the present writer will try to 
explain his own method of treatment by de- 
scribing, in untechnical language, work that 
he has actually done. This will be best 
accomplished by studying what took place 
during the recovery of patients under his care, 
and referring the changes to known physical 
and psychical processes with which they were 
naturally correlated. But, since the chosen 
term includes much in both theory and prac- 
tice which need not be insisted on here, it 
will prevent confusion to determine how it 
shall be used in this paper. 

Without attempting to formulate an all- 
inclusive definition, it is safe to assume that 



22 



Suggestion Defined 

suggestions made for therapeutical purposes are 
psychical stimuli which evoke in a patient the 
kinetic energy called vis medicatrix nature. 
This seems to be all that is required for 
a practical working basis, while it excludes 
other forms of suggestion which do not come 
within the present purview. It also accents 
the analogy between psychical and medical 
modes of treatment, between the office of 
suggestion and the office of drugs. 



23 



THE PHYSICAL ELEMENT. 

In treatment by the psychical method the 
first duty of a practitioner is, of course, to find 
out what the matter is with the patient ; and 
this information is obtained by the same 
means that medical doctors use. He may 
also have psychical access to facts which 
physical examination does not reveal. This 
done, the next step is to decide what kind of 
suggestions the case requires ; and, since these 
stimuli are addressed to the patient's brain, it 
is an advantage to know the neural path from 
that organ to the seat of disease. A loose 
notion prevails that in psychical practice such 
knowledge is unnecessary ; but one who knows 
where the mark is, and aims straight at it, is 
more likely to hit than one who fires at ran- 
dom and trusts to luck. There is, doubtless, 
a best way to give psychical treatment. In- 
telligence and experience count here as else- 
where ; and skill results from thorough study 
combined with faithful practice. Failures 
are as instructive as successes. In the exer- 
cise of this art, as in every other, proficiency 
depends on fitness, natural and acquired. No 
cheap, shallow preparation will insure pro- 
fessional power like broad critical study of 

24 



A Practitioner's Outfit 

the subject in all its relations and phases. If 
the responsible duties of attending the sick 
demand of the medical man a liberal educa- 
tion and years of special study besides, would 
not as high an educational standard befit a 
psychical healer as well ? This is not saying 
that the training of the two should be iden- 
tical. A large part of the study prescribed in 
the curriculum of a medical school would be 
useful to one who practices by suggestion. At 
the same time a psychical healer ought to 
have a far more intimate and extensive ac- 
quaintance with psychology than most medical 
students acquire. It may also be observed, in 
passing, that physicians of every school would 
find great benefit in a more abounding knowl- 
edge of this far-reaching science ; that is, of 
what Pierre Janet calls " objective psychology, 
which does not aim to supplant subjective 
psychology. . . . Neither does it aspire to set 
up any system of metaphysics or religion, or 
to overthrow any earnest belief. Its task is 
to gather together the facts which are essen- 
tial for a real insight into the working of 
men's minds, and to discover the art of 
securing the freest play for healthy mental 
life and the best alleviation for mental disease." 
We know that no doctor should attempt to 

25 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

administer drugs unless he has an expert 
knowledge of their nature. Has he any more 
right to work upon the sick by suggestion, 
without possessing at least a working knowl- 
edge of the tremendous force he attempts to 
call into action ? 

In November, 1895, a young man came 
to me for help who was suffering from rheu- 
matism in his right knee. He was a robust- 
looking fellow of twenty-one, in good general 
health. He had the care of electric street 
lights, and was consequently exposed to all 
sorts of weather while making his daily rounds ; 
and the continual strain of climbing the poles 
aggravated his lameness. The knee had given 
him trouble during two previous winters, al- 
though he had no attacks during the warm 
months that intervened. At the time I saw 
him the joint was somewhat stiff, so that he 
limped when he walked, and complained of 
constant soreness and pain. The usual med- 
icinal treatment had failed to give relief. 

During the slight physical examination re- 
quired, this patient was rather nervous and 
seemed to feel suspicious; for he asked if 
I were going to hypnotize him. I assured 
him to the contrary, and explained that the 
treatment to be given would interfere in no 

26 



Study of a Case 

way with his bodily or mental freedom, would 
produce no unpleasant sensations, and require 
no preparation on his part. He then sat 
quietly looking out of the window, while I 
sat near him in silence for about fifteen 
minutes and made the necessary suggestions. 

My silence was evidently misinterpreted ; 
for, as soon as I was through, he asked in an 
impatient tone : " When are you going to treat 
my knee ? I've got to go back to my work." 
On being told that this duty was already per- 
formed, he began to move about, and seemed 
much surprised to find that the soreness and 
pain were gone from the limb. After a second 
treatment, given on the following day, the 
joint ceased to give him any trouble. This 
case was of the common type, and the treat- 
ment was in no way exceptional ; and my 
note-book shows that I had a number of 
other cases of the same trouble during the 
month, and treated them with a like result. 
A year later I learned that this young man 
had felt no return of his rheumatism, which 
shows that recovery was complete. 

In our search for an explanation of this 
phenomenon the first point to attract atten- 
tion is that this patient bore no conscious 
part in his own cure. In no sense did he in- 

27 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

telligently co-operate with me in an attempt 
to help him. He did not understand the 
method of treatment, he utterly failed to grasp 
the meaning of the suggestion I made, and 
did not know when it w r as given. He was 
as ignorant of the recuperative change taking 
place in his system as he was of the growing 
process in his hair and nails. He told a 
friend, who inquired what I did to his knee, 
" He didn't do nothin'." That a person 
should be thus unconscious of a cure taking 
place within his own body is not strange ; for 
it is the rule in such experiences, to which, 
strictly speaking, there are no exceptions. 
But the reader is asked to take note that this 
uniform fact of convalescence disputes the 
prevalent belief that under psychical treat- 
ment the process of getting well is somehow 
a mental act. We need to be convinced 
that the sort of ignorance which this young 
man displayed is perfectly natural and just 
what was to be expected. 

To whatever agency the evolution of a 
cure be ascribed, it is due to remedial energy 
acting through the nervous system of the 
patient. Vis medicatrix, the instinctive faculty 
which makes for health and responds to ap- 
propriate stimuli, belongs to a group of 

28 



Plurality of Consciousness 

special powers whose office is to maintain 
the organic animal life. The neural mechan- 
ism, in which these vital activities originate, 
is located in the occipital lobes of the brain. 
Thought does not generate this form of force, 
in the ordinary sense ; nor does the personal 
will control it. But because its action is 
thus involuntary, it does not follow that it 
is left to blind chance and without intelligent 
guidance. Its operation is dependent on 
psychical law, and must be attended by 
consciousness. It may not obey the same 
consciousness which presides over that group 
of faculties which manifests through the fron- 
tal lobes of the brain as cognition, thought, 
and will. Indeed, modern psychologists claim 
that man is endowed with more than a single 
consciousness, — that two distinct conscious- 
nesses, or even a greater number, may coexist 
in one and the same living brain, each having 
its own peculiar means and mode of mani- 
festation, while neither it aware of the presence 
of the others. The conception of mind, which 
we have so long regarded as one unified in- 
telligence, as being thus split up, will strike 
the novice as bizarre ; and some readers may 
account the doctrine a blank heresy. But it 
has come to be accepted by science \ and the 

29 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

remarkable experiments made by Gurney, 
Janet, Binet, and others, serve to establish 
its truth, while the well-known phenomena 
of " post-suggestion " are unaccountable on 
any other hypothesis. 

One need not look beyond the experiences 
of common life to be convinced that such an 
extension of the sphere of consciousness is 
indispensable to the proper outfit of man as 
we know him to-day. Drowsiness impairs 
the frontal consciousness as well as the senses, 
and in the profound stage of sleep this con- 
sciousness is lost. During a third part of 
life, then, another intelligence must watch 
over and direct the vital functions, or there 
would be continual breaks in personal identity ; 
that is to say, existence for the individual 
would consist of a series of diurnal lives inter- 
spaced with blanks of nocturnal annihilation. 
And when a person, while sound asleep, leaves 
his bed, traverses dark and strange apartments, 
performs acts requiring conscious guidance 
or takes a rational part in conversation, what 
innate tutelar power attends the sleep-walker ? 
Then, when a heavy sleeper wishes to awake 
earlier than is his wont, who is that inward 
watcher who rouses him at the preappointed 
hour ? 

3° 



Proofs from Experience 

If man requires another than his ordinary 
consciousness to take care of him while asleep, 
not less useful is this same psychical provision 
when he is awake. Many persons are able 
to obtain knowledge which does not come to 
them through their senses, in the usual way, 
but arrives in the mind by direct communi- 
cation from another conscious intelligence, 
which apparently knows more of what con- 
cerns their welfare than their ordinary reason 
does. I have known a number of persons 
who, like myself, could tell the contents of 
letters in their mail before opening them. 
Several years ago a friend of mine came to 
Boston for the first time, arriving at what 
was then the Providence Railroad station in 
Park Square. He wished to walk to the 
Lowell station on the opposite side of the 
city. Being utterly ignorant of the streets 
as well as the general direction to take, he 
confidently set forth without asking the way, 
and reached his destination by the most direct 
path. In doing this, he trusted solely to 
" instinctive guidance," as he called it, and 
not to any hints or clews obtained through 
the senses. 

The following authentic account describes 
a case in which a wiser than his ordinary 

3i 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

mind came to the aid of a small boy during 
a severe ordeal: " In the year 1837, Vito 
Mangiamele, who gave his age as ten years 
and four months, presented himself before 
Arago [the eminent French savant] in Paris. 
He was the son of a shepherd of Sicily, who 
was not able to give his son any instruction. 
By chance it was discovered that by methods 
peculiar to himself the boy solved problems 
that seemed at first view to require extended 
mathematical knowledge. In the presence 
of the Academy [of Sciences] , Arago proposed 
the following questions : c What is the cube 
root of 3,796,416 ? ' In the space of about 
half a minute the child responded 156, which 
is correct. c What satisfies the condition that 
its cube plus five times its square is equal to 
42 times itself increased by 40 ? ' Every- 
body understands that this is a demand for 
the root of the equation x z -±- $x 2 — 42* — 
40 = o. In less than a minute Vito re- 
sponded that 5 satisfies the condition, which 
is correct. The third question related to the 
solution of the equation x 5 — \x — 16779=0. 
This time the child remained four or five 
minutes without answering. Finally, he de- 
manded with some hesitation if 3 would not 
be the solution desired. The secretary hav- 

32 



Occipital Guidance 

ing informed him that he was wrong, Vito, 
a few minutes afterward, gave the number 7 
as the true solution. Having finally been 
requested to extract the tenth root of 282,- 
475,249, Vito found in a short time that the 
root is 7." 

An eminent professor in an American 
university once told the present writer that, 
while spending a vacation in the country, he 
fell from a horse he was riding, and was so 
badly hurt that he lost consciousness. How 
long after the accident he lay upon the 
ground he could not tell, but, while still 
unconscious, he got up, led the horse home 
(a distance of about two miles), and put him 
into the stable where he belonged. Accord- 
ing to the popular belief, one might say, 
Here was a man who did not know any- 
thing; yet during this condition of uncon- 
sciousness he did what would have been 
impossible unless he did know something. 

The more intimate and extensive study 
which scientific methods now make possible 
shows man's psychical being to be no such 
thoroughly explored region of known extent 
and determined limits as some earlier 
scholars have supposed. It resembles the 
grants of land made to the first settlers along 

33 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

our Atlantic coast,— strips of seaboard terri- 
tory bounded in part, but stretching away 
into undefined wilds, no one knew how far 
to the westward. Certain sides and aspects 
of our mental life, some faculties and func- 
tions, have indeed become familiar; but only 
in recent years have students turned their 
attention to the dim domain yet unsurveyed 
or seriously asked how far into the unknown 
waste the frontier line of research may law- 
fully be pushed. 

This closer acquaintance with his psychi- 
cal resources strengthens the conviction that 
man is too large a being, too highly endowed, 
to find complete expression and an adequate 
outlet for his total self through the channel 
of a single consciousness ; that not all the 
activities of which he is capable can find 
room and play, unless they use the whole 
brain for an organ. Our remote ancestors 
may have possessed a very limited conscious- 
ness, unvexed by any of the problems of a 
later age or a science which " makes thought 
physical and blots out life with question 
marks " ; and a simpler brain doubtless suf- 
ficed for its organ. But it is a far cry from 
the simian in his savage wildness to the 
civilized gentleman with his refinements and 

34 



Th£ Real Power 

varied culture. Slowly the man supersedes 
the beast ; and cosmic agencies, u acting 
through fivescore millenniums," have evolved 
the complex cerebral structure that crowns 
the nervous system of the human being 
to-day. 

Plurality of consciousness is granted to be 
the underlying fact which makes true sug- 
gestion possible. The transmitted stimuli 
that arouse the dormant physical energy 
of the invalid are not the "concentrated 
thought " or " intense will " of one ordinary 
mind spurring an enfeebled mind to a more 
determined fight with disease, not affirma- 
tions and commands spoken by a physician 
and conveyed through voice and ear. What- 
ever formalities attend the phenomena of 
psychical treatment, the real power which 
evokes and produces the effect issues from a 
consciousness which acts without the aid of 
speech and will, traverses non-sensory adits, 
and, unknown to the patient, sets going 
within his body the organic and functional 
changes that make for cure. 

Various names have been chosen to dis- 
tinguish this consciousness from the ordinary 
consciousness which we identify with the self 
of daily experience. The Society for Psychi- 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

cal Research designates it as "subliminal," 
— that is, below the threshold of ordinary 
consciousness ; Fechner refers to it as con- 
sciousness acting below the psycho-physical 
threshold ; Mr. Myers, in his earlier discus- 
sions, names ordinary consciousness " em- 
pirical " and the others " subjacent strata " ; 
Dr. Sidis speaks of it as the u secondary " 
consciousness ; Dr. Morton Prince uses the 
term " unconscious mind." For certain 
reasons it might be convenient to call ordi- 
nary consciousness sensory and the other 
ethereal^ or the former frontal and the latter 
occipital. 



36 



THE PSYCHICAL ELEMENT. 

Having considered what treatment by 
suggestion is for the patient, we may next 
inquire what it is for the operator. Giving 
such treatment is not an unconscious bodily 
experience like getting well, but a psychical 
function intelligently performed. In previous 
pages, suggestions for therapeutical purposes 
are spoken of as stimuli which evoke changes 
in the occipital part of the brain. These 
centres of nervous response are within the 
jurisdiction of a consciousness which is not 
the one identified with the self of daily life, 
It is a consciousness that chooses and acts ; 
but, in common parlance, we say the man is 
wholly unconscious of the presence of this 
occipital guardian of his organic life. As far 
as the control of vis medicatrix natures is con- 
cerned, this occipital consciousness is sove- 
reign ; and the ordinary consciousness of the 
man is debarred from meddling with it. Each 
of these twain has its own prescribed field of 
activity within the sensorium ; each has its 
own distinct physical organ of manifestation ; 
and each acts normally and forcibly within 
its proper domain. The frontal conscious- 
ness of A, for example, may freely address 

37 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

the frontal consciousness of other individuals 
through sensory channels of intercommuni- 
cation ; and the occipital consciousness of A 
may address the occipital consciousness of 
other individuals through more ethereal adits 
of intercommunication. But it cannot be 
affirmed that A's frontal consciousness can 
affect the occipital faculties of another being 
by the exercise of will. I am sure that 
through my ordinary mind I may indirectly 
influence your ordinary mind by the use of 
sensory means ; also, that my occipital con- 
sciousness may directly influence your occip- 
ital action by the use of non-sensory means 
known as telepathy. In the former case 
the influence will be consciously exerted and 
received by ordinary minds or selves. In 
the latter case the phenomenon eludes the 
ordinary consciousness of both sender and 
receiver. How appropriate, then, how in 
accord with the demands of science and 
common sense, to infer that stimuli meant to 
produce changes within the occipital lobes of 
another person should issue from the occipital 
consciousness of him who Suggests them ! If 
it can be shown that this most reasonable 
inference is what actually takes place in prac- 
tice, it is proper to extend the definition 

33 



Cure an Occipital Function 

already proposed, and say that suggestions are 
psychical messages issued from the occipital con- 
sciousness of the sender. Nothing short of this 
is intelligent, efficient treatment of disease. 
This is the essence of every successful form 
of suggestion, whether practitioners know it 
or not. This is believed to be in accord with 
the psychology and physiology of the subject 
as now understood and attested by veridical 
experiments. Let us see how this is illus- 
trated in actual work. 

A few years ago I treated the case of a 
lady about thirty years of age, who described 
the leading feature of her malady as "awful 
depression of spirits." She explained that 
this distressing state of mind was not con- 
stant, but intermittent. The frequent attacks 
usually came on soon after mid-day or about 
bedtime, but she was liable to have one at 
any hour of the twenty-four. They were 
always severe and protracted, lasting from a 
number of hours to one — sometimes two — 
whole days. Certain acts often seemed to 
be the occasions of them, as, for example, 
playing the piano, handling pieces of bric-a- 
brac, reading passages in books ; but, for the 
most part, the attacks could not be traced to 
any known initiative. Her mental experiences 

39 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

during these lapses had taken a deep hold 
upon her imagination, and she fancied herself 
as fast losing cerebral balance and going daft. 
Mere vagaries, they expressed no facts of her 
daily life. There was no coherent medita- 
tion, no train of thought giving healthy exer- 
cise to the mental powers, not even reverie, 
which, however idle, may be negatively pleas- 
ant. On the contrary, her brain seemed to be 
the helpless organ of some malevolent imp, 
who kept her repeating incessantly a mortify- 
ing lingo, with no power to stop or displace it 
with a happier topic. She was as much im- 
posed upon as the nervous primary school- 
teacher who told me that she dreamed all 
night long that she was trying to make a 
stupid boy learn the difference between the 
letters B and R. To sustain such a grind 
as " My dame had a lame, tame crane," in 
the old round, were bad enough if kept up 
for hours ; but a peculiar horror was super- 
added to this lady's torture, for her haunting 
demon suggested atrocious crime and unchaste 
fancies as the content of the exercise. "I 
must kill my dear mother " was the fiendish 
thought (?) which mixed itself with a vile 
compound of disgusting obscenity ; and from 
this prolonged torment no relief came except 

40 



A Strange Case 

in the stupor of narcotics or the sleep of sheer 
exhaustion. 

This young lady had a refined, sensitive 
nature, a lofty moral standard, strong aver- 
sion to all that is indelicate or vulgar ; and 
no experience in her life, as far as I learned, 
could have suggested the humiliating fancies 
which vexed her. She had never dwelt in 
an atmosphere which breeds such ideas, nor 
was she insane. You would say that, if the 
young man's rheumatism were wholly a bodily 
malady, hers was as truly a case of purely 
mental disorder, and its cure a mental process. 
Before coming to me, she had tried a hypnotic 
physician of good standing and skill, who 
counselled her to change the subject whenever 
she fell into a depressed mood, and help her- 
self by displacing bad thoughts with better; 
but he acknowledged that he was unable to 
treat the case, because she did not hold her 
attention long enough to be hypnotized. She 
had also been a patient in a well-known in- 
stitution for nervous invalids, where she was 
under treatment a long while without getting 
better. 

While searching for the physical basis of 
this trouble (for it was not a case for my 
method of treatment unless it had a physical 

41 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

basis), I discovered that the frontal lobes 
of the patient's brain had a tendency to be 
anaemic ; and that during these attacks of de- 
pression the supply of blood in this part of 
the cerebrum was very scant. I noted also 
the decided lack in the proportion of red 
corpuscles. Now the mental processes will 
not be normal unless the fore-brain, which is 
the u loom of thought," be well supplied with 
rich blood. Any disturbance of the circula- 
tion in this delicate organism is attended by 
changes in mental action. It is known that, 
if the arterial currents be largely shut off from 
the frontal lobes, those changes and symp- 
toms ensue which are noticed in what is com- 
monly called depression. The case we are 
studying presented just such conditions. For 
a long time this patient's brain had been 
poorly nourished. It was starving for lack 
of nutrition. Consequently, it was too feeble, 
during the attacks above described, to perform 
the functions of mentation ; for then it was 
fairly quivering from sheer weakness, and, 
instead of being an organ of true thought, it 
could only produce empty counterfeits of 
thought. Feeling confident that such a 
diagnosis would account for the distressing 
experiences of my patient, I explained it to 

42 



Her Trouble was Physical 

her, and at the same time assured her that 
this hateful lingo was not thinking at all, but 
a mere irresponsible babble, as devoid of 
mental factors as the chatter of a parrot, — nay, 
even more so ; for the bird in repeating what 
he hears is exercising a proper function in a 
normal fashion, while her torturing grind was 
unnatural and abnormal, like the trembling 
of a sick man's hand because it has become so 
weakened by disease that it cannot keep still. 
Notwithstanding its mental aspect, a cure 
of a case of this kind must be evolved as 
physical change : the normal supply of blood 
must be restored to the famished brain tissue. 
Somehow, more of the indispensable red life- 
stream must flow into the enfeebled vessels 
and stop the quivering. In other words, it 
was the bodily organ of thought which was 
at fault in this case ; and that organ must get 
enough food and become strong enough to 
obey the thinker instead of beating a " devil's 
tattoo" like a drivelling dotard. In choos- 
ing the course of treatment which I pur- 
sued, my aim was twofold : first, temporary 
alleviation of the " depression " ; and, second, 
the more remote benefit of established healthy 
action. It was possible to relieve even the 
severest attacks for the time being by sug- 

43 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

gestions which affected the vaso-motor nerves 
that govern the blood-vessels involved ; but 
it took a long time to produce a lasting cure. 
To understand what such suggestions mean 
for the person who makes them, — or, at least, 
what they mean for me while acting as 
agent, — it is necessary to keep in mind that, 
as here defined, they are stimuli which evoke 
vis medicatrix. We must not associate with 
the transmission of them any idea that they 
are thought formulas intended to inform the 
patient, or appeals addressed to his reason, or 
commands for him to obey. The message 
of help that passes from the suggester to the 
brain of the patient is a subtle, impalpable 
influence which affects some part of the gray 
matter of that brain. But that responding 
gray matter of the patient does not think 
any more than his bones think, does not 
understand language any more than his 
muscles do : it is unstable matter, extremely 
sensitive to certain kinds of stimuli, and, 
when affected by them, it behaves according 
to its nature, which is to say, according to 
biological law. Such a suggestion is not an 
order that certain changes take place : it is the 
making of those changes, — not a direction 
that a thing be done, but the doing of it. That 

44 



The Mystery of It 

this statement involves a baffling mystery 
which the ordinary intelligence is unable to 
fathom must be admitted, because that entity 
is debarred from invading the laboratory of 
occipital consciousness. If by some trans- 
formation our occipital consciousness could 
become for the nonce our only consciousness, 
and do our sensory thinking as the frontal 
consciousness now does it, we might have 
access to the truth, and solve the vexed rid- 
dle of telepathy. But no one can tell us how 
consciousness and its organ, the brain, came 
to be what they are, or what greater develop- 
ments are in store for them. At present 
one consciousness, at least, keeps its secrets 
inviolable, because in the nature of the case 
it is impossible for the ordinary mind to 
become sensibly aware of the essence and 
operation of these suggestions. Such phe- 
nomena are in our present condition tran- 
scendental functions, whose generation and 
mechanism the understanding cannot grasp. 
In other words, we have at command no 
senses which react upon them so as to bring 
them into the field of ordinary consciousness. 
But there is reason for the expectation that 
these limitations will some time disappear, 
because the consciousness, which is depends 

45 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

ent on the senses, is held to be an "un- 
finished product of evolution." It may help 
us to get this conception if we glance for a 
moment at certain well-known inabilities of 
ordinary consciousness. Scientists assure us 
that there are displays of force in the physical 
world in which we are enwrapped that our 
senses never detect. The magnetic and 
electrical currents escape our direct percep- 
tion, and could not be proved to exist, were 
they not convertible into equivalent amounts 
of other forms of energy which our senses 
perceive. There are tones which our ears 
cannot hear, beams which produce no light 
for our eyes, substances which our organs of 
taste and smell cannot recognize. If our 
power be so limited in what we call the ma- 
terial world par excellence, where the senses 
have largest play, it is in sooth emphatically 
so in the more ethereal world of mind. Let 
us not repeat the error of hard-headed mate- 
rialists who convert the scientific proposition 
that every event in nature occurs according 
to law into " every event happens according 
to some law already known to us" Was it 
Victor Hugo who remarked that what seems 
impossible or a miracle from our prescribed 
standpoint may appear a common manifesta- 

46 



Split-off Consciousness 

tion of law from the standpoint of the uni- 
verse ? Spinoza declared that a the flung 
stone, if it possessed consciousness, would 
believe its flight to be voluntary " ; and so 
cock-sure is the average mortal that his in- 
dividual mind, like Robinson Crusoe on the 
lonely island, is conscious monarch of all it 
surveys, that he spurns the idea of another 
conscious intelligence of equal authority 
sharing the cerebral domain with what he 
assumes to be his sole mind. 

It is easy to see that the difficulty which 
confronts us when we aspire to master these 
" subliminal arcana " does not belong to the 
alleged facts which we are asked to accept. 
We can readily imagine a human being with 
two consciousnesses, just as the author of 
" Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde " imagined a man 
possessed of two distinct personalities. The 
perplexity arises when we try to square the 
doctrine of intellectual plurality with the 
orthodox creed of psychology. What vexes 
us is th^at, if the view be correct, we are not 
permitted to be conscious of the activities of 
the " split-off" consciousness, and it may 
take a long while to reconcile us to the true 
situation. But we may safely leave the 
thought to domesticate itself in our minds 

47 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

as best it can, while we study another phase 
of the subject which will prove more inter- 
esting to a majority of readers. 

As I understand it, making suggestions 
consists in producing bodily changes in a 
patient, by acting through the neural mech- 
anism of his brain and stimulating the 
plastic healing power. In the case under 
consideration the thing to be done was to 
make a change in the circulation within 
the patient's cranium. This decision was 
reached by examination. But, after these 
preliminaries were attended to, the duty of 
the frontal consciousness was done ; and that 
intelligence surrendered my brain, so to say, 
to the use of another agent whose sole right 
it was to make the suggestions required. 
By the terms of this surrender my ordinary 
mind took no part in the psychical treatment 
of the waiting patient. Indeed, it is not too 
much to claim that it was debarred from 
doing so by the physical structure of the 
organ through which it acts; and, strictly 
speaking, it does not know what its neighbor 
consciousness is about or watch the process 
of treatment. This is tantamount to saying 
what is found to be true in practice, — 
namely, that I have no sensory knowledge of 

48 



True Suggestion Effortless 

what my occipital consciousness does when it 
makes a suggestion ; and, in the nature of the 
case, such knowledge is impossible. All I 
feel sure of is that, when the proper condi- 
tions exist, the unique act takes place, and 
the patient gets the benefit. 

While my occipital consciousness is dis- 
charging its official duty to a patient, I am 
not aware of making any effort either physi- 
cal or mental ; and after it is done there is 
no sense of fatigue. I cannot better de- 
scribe the experience of these moments, 
during which I seem to abandon myself 
completely to the high power, than by using 
the words of persons who have felt the in- 
spirations of genius. They speak of being 
invaded by a presence not themselves, which, 
using them as obedient organs, does wonder- 
ful things through them, and creates works 
of art which their ordinary efforts could 
never have produced. They tell us that, 
while the verve lasts, they execute without 
effort 'and do not become weary. When 
the time comes to treat a patient, I simply 
let myself be used as a medium for the 
transmission of the suggestion ; and, while 
I do not in the ordinary sense initiate the 
evocative message which passes from me to 

49 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

the patient, there is never a doubt that my 
occipital consciousness will so act, and the 
suggestion be sent. I would not, however, 
convey the idea that the real author and 
agent of these suggestions seems to me to 
be a spiritual entity by which I am obsessed ; 
for I believe the occipital intelligence capable 
of producing curative changes without ex- 
traneous aid, just as the intellect wills. 

But what is the ordinary mind about 
during these periods of suspense ? What is 
the status of the frontal consciousness while 
the other is making a suggestion ? It can- 
not assist in that occipital business or be a 
silent spectator. " Does it think about the 
patient ? " it is often asked ; or, " Does it 
stop the loom of thought, and do nothing at 
all ? " The most favorable attitude is one 
of inattention. The regular vocation of the 
deliberative faculties is to deal with such 
matters as are submitted to them. Divers 
impressions crowd the sensorium during our 
waking life, and clamor to be recognized and 
thought about. We give them attention or 
withhold it, as we see fit : this is our privilege ; 
and, when the faculties are acting normally, 
we freely exercise this choice. During the 
time devoted to suggestion it is important 

50 



Inattention 

that the activities of the fore-brain be sus- 
pended as far as possible, in order that the 
total energy of the healer may be conserved 
for that single end. Consequently, he may 
neglect to notice the thick-coming impres- 
sions that arrive, just as a preoccupied person 
may neglect for the time being to answer 
the door bell. This seems to be the only 
practical direction to give, since the impres- 
sions cannot be absolutely shut out; and the 
concentration of thought and stress of will, 
which many persons suppose to be essential, 
fatigue the brain, and detract from the ef- 
ficiency of the treatment. 

The tendency of the method of suggestion 
herein described is to discount both in theory 
and practice the element of attention con- 
sidered indispensable to the success of other 
modes of so-called psychical treatment. 
Another fact not less significant is that the 
claim of the hypnotists that suggestion is of 
little or no avail unless the patient's attention 
and c6-operation be secured does not hold 
good in my own practice, for in many in- 
stances I have treated with marked success 
patients who did not realize that I was try- 
ing to help them or take any notice of what 
I was doing. 

5i 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

In 1893 a woman who worked at day 
labor came to my house once a week to do 
cleaning. On the morning of November 10, 
while she was busy as usual, I noticed that 
she seemed to be in great distress. In re- 
sponse to my inquiries she told me that her 
only son, an infant of two years, had been 
very sick for two months, that the attending 
physician had a consultation the day before, 
and reported that nothing more could be done 
for the child, and he could not live many 
hours. When she left home that morning, 
he appeared to be dying. I told the heart- 
broken mother that, if the doctors could do 
nothing more, I would like to try the effect 
of suggestion on the case. She readily con- 
sented, and I went at once to see the boy. I 
found him lying in his grandmother's lap. 
He was greatly emaciated, his fingers and 
arms lean and bony, his face pinched and 
the skin drawn tight, and his big eyes, set in 
their hollow orbits, stared ominously. He 
seemed well-nigh moribund, and his grand- 
mother said he hadn't known anything for 
hours. I found it impossible to arouse him 
from his lethargy, and I am sure he was not 
aware of my presence. This boy had had 
an excessive diarrhoea ever since he was first 
taken ill. He could digest no food, and his 

52 



Attention Unnecessary 

life was ebbing away from sheer exhaustion. 
I gave him a treatment, and departed feeling 
that it was doubtful if he survived. I was 
unable to visit him again for six days, and 
then was surprised to find that the alvine 
evacuations ceased soon after I made my 
first call. He brightened up, began to take 
nourishment, and was doing well. This 
time he took notice when I entered the room 
where he was, and I succeeded in making 
him laugh. After a few more treatments 
the child made a good recovery, and soon be- 
came a robust, pugnacious little bruiser. 
The only drawback to his mother's joy at the 
unexpected result was that the doctor who 
had doomed the boy to death claimed the 
credit of curing him. 

I treated two incurable insane persons, in 
order to suppress certain disagreeable nervous 
movements to which they were addicted, and 
found it impossible to hold their attention 
for even a moment ; but the suggestions 
produced the desired effect. I cured a girl 
of a choreic affection by treating her at a dis- 
tance without her knowledge; and I have 
treated sick animals with gratifying success, 
which could not by any stretch of the truth be 
said to have given me any co-operative at- 
tention. 

53 



CASES. 

My experience with therapeutical sugges- 
tion has been confined to a limited class of 
cases. With few exceptions the patients I 
have treated in this way were suffering from 
maladies of long standing, and had already 
tried medical remedies without being bene- 
fited. Thus far I have declined to extend 
my practice to the much larger class of 
cases popularly known as acute. In a few 
instances a medical physician has asked me 
to treat a patient under his care while he 
watched the progress of the case, and I have 
done so ; and I have taken a small number 
of others at the urgent desire of family 
friends. One of the latter had a pronounced 
attack of jaundice which was cured in five 
days. In another instance mild scarlatina 
was having a run in a family of children 
who were attended by a medical practitioner. 
The last to come down with the disease was 
a small boy; and, with the consent of the 
doctor, his parents asked me to take charge 
of the case. He was as sick as any of the 
others who took medicine, but made a good 
recovery in less time than they did. A 
violent attack of tonsillitis yielded to my 

54 



Rheumatic Fever 

suggestions in the course of twelve hours. 
In December, 1897, I treate d a lady who 
had acute rheumatism of the kind commonly 
called rheumatic fever. She had had a 
winter run of this disease twice, and so was 
a pretty good judge of the symptoms when 
they appeared the third time. I gave her 
the first treatment in the evening of the 
fourteenth day of the month. She had then 
been suffering for a week. The fever and 
pain were, of course, marked symptoms ; but 
both had abated when I saw her a second 
time the next morning. I treated her twice 
that day, once on the 16th, twice on the 
17th, once on the 1 8th, and once on the 
20th. After the 15th the temperature be- 
came normal, and remained so ; nor did she 
have any more pain, with the exception of 
short attacks during the evenings of the 
1 6th and 17th. When we remember that 
this disease rarely terminates in less than six 
weeks, during the greater part of which 
period the febrile symptoms continue to be 
severe, it would not be strange if the patient, 
contrasting this attack with the two she had 
suffered before, were surprised to find her- 
self well in eight days. Bruises, wounds, 
burns, and muscular strains, even when 

55 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

severe, heal rapidly under this treatment; 
and the attendant pain may be effectually 
suppressed from the first. But the little 
experience I have had with acute diseases, 
while interesting, affords no decisive test; 
and this record must be regarded as merely a 
hint of future possibilities. 

It will be observed that I describe cases 
in a popular way rather than in professional 
language which the laity would not under- 
stand, and make no attempt to classify. 
The aim is to inform the public about the 
nature and results of my work in this field, 
especially those members who may have a 
personal reason for wishing to know more 
about it ; and I am sure that what inquiring 
invalids want most to find out is whether 
cases like their own have been successfully 
treated in this manner. It is in response to 
this public demand that I mention in detail 
a variety of cases, and give a list of the 
maladies with which I have had to do up to 
date. 

As might be expected, I have found some 
patients more susceptible to suggestion than 
others ; and certain diseases among those that 
I have treated yielded more quickly than the 
rest. Why one individual responds readily 

56 



How Patients Respond 

and another slowly or not at all I cannot 
tell. I only know the fact, and that the 
action of drugs upon different patients is 
subject to a like variation. Reckoned on 
the score of age, my observation is that in- 
fants are uniformly the most responsive 
patients, growing children are more easily 
affected than adults, and very aged persons 
are the hardest to reach. I am not aware 
that sex modifies these conditions in any 
appreciable degree. Very ignorant, emo- 
tional (but not superstitious) people respond 
more quickly, though not more surely, than 
the highly educated. A hard-headed, scepti- 
cal man of affairs is quite as likely to get 
help as a delicate, credulous woman. 

I have learned a few trustworthy facts 
concerning the probability of receiving psy- 
chical help in different cases. It is by no 
means certain that maladies regarded as in- 
curable by the medical profession, and 
others given up as hopeless by medical at- 
tendants, will also defy suggestion, because 
the^ two kinds of treatment are radically 
different in their action. There seems to be 
some variation in the relative responsiveness 
of different organs of the body. Those whose 
functions are controlled by the sympathetic 

57 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

nerve system may be reached more surely 
and quickly than others. This phenomenon 
is noticeable in the treatment of abdominal 
and pelvic viscera, especially of the latter. 

That despair of medical practitioners, 
chronic indigestion or dyspepsia, in its differ- 
ent phases readily yields to suggestion. The 
name is given to functional disturbances of 
the digestive apparatus when there is little or 
no organic disease. It would seem as though 
such a complaint need not be very distressing 
or hard to cure ; but persons who have had 
experience of its quality can testify that it is 
not easily dislodged, and may give rise to 
a greater number of forms of misery than 
usually attend much graver maladies, since 
its ravages are not confined to the stomach, 
but involve adjacent and often more remote 
organs in their maleficent course. The symp- 
toms distinctly gastric are loss of appetite 
and relish, nausea, oppression and pain in 
the organ, sense of fulness and weight, acid- 
ity, heartburn, fetid eructations, sense of heat 
or sometimes of cold, and a fluttering, sink- 
ing feeling. Not all of these symptoms may 
be observed at the same time or all of the 
time, but they by no means complete the list 
of regulation blue devils which vex the suf- 

53 



Indigestion Cured 

ferer. The bowels become deranged and 
inert, their action is feeble; and constipation 
supervenes, initiating a special train of tort- 
ures of its own, to which piles are the climax. 
The kidneys sometimes behave badly ; and 
the liver ceases to work normally, because 
the natural channels of the bile are obstructed 
and it is absorbed into the blood. When 
there is excessive flatulence, the pressure of 
u wind " produces nervous sensations in the 
chest, easily mistaken for palpitation ; and 
these may be accompanied by difficult breath- 
ing, causing the scared sufferers to imagine 
they have heart disease. As if the afflictions 
already mentioned were not enough to humble 
the patient's pride and raise the vexing doubt, 
is life worth living ? the brain takes up the 
tale of woe, and reflects the epigastric dis- 
order in the very headquarters of the nervous 
system. The head aches, it is not clear. The 
loom of thought is clogged, the mind refuses 
to work. The top of the skull seems about 
to lift or has the opposite sensation, as though 
it were crushing in ; and there is a feeling of 
tightness around the head, as though the 
temples were encircled with a band. Not all 
these baleful symptoms may be observed in 
a single case; but every victim of chronic 

59 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

indigestion will recognize those that fit his 
own case, with, perhaps, others not mentioned 
in this description. Dieting usually does but 
little good ; for the patient gradually crosses 
off his bill of fare one article after another 
which he can no longer abide until his meals 
cease to have any variety, and he partakes 
of the few remaining viands with a morbid 
expectation that they will hurt him, which is 
seldom disappointed. Medicine may alleviate, 
change and rest induce temporary improve- 
ment ; but for those who have long endured 
the misery, and no less for those who have 
just set out on this via dolorosa^ suggestion 
offers the most natural and rapid means of 
cure. It sometimes works magical changes 
in a short space of time. Those annoying 
conditions of the liver, for which the doctors 
begin to suspect they have no true cholagogues, 
soon abate ; the digestive organs resume their 
work in a healthy fashion; the bowels act 
properly, and constipation and piles disappear; 
the brain " clears up," and thought grows 
nimble ; appetite returns, food is assimilated, 
and bodily nutrition revives. 

Of the many persons who have applied to 
me to be emancipated from this bondage of 
the flesh, all have received benefit, and very 

60 



Constipation Cured 

few have failed of thorough cure. Out of 
thirty-six obstinate cases which I treated 
within a short period there were twenty-five 
complete cures, and eight others were so much 
helped that a good recovery followed later. 
Of twenty-eight cases of habitual constipation, 
twenty-five were permanently cured and three 
experienced temporary relief. I have had 
two cases of this intractable malady which 
illustrate, by sharp contrast, the degree of 
responsiveness in different patients. One 
was that of a lady of fifty-five, who had 
suffered continuously for twenty-five years, 
and had long ceased to have any natural 
action. Relief and cure followed immediately 
after a single treatment. In the other case 
a girl of sixteen, who had suffered only a year 
from the trouble, got no relief at all from 
seven treatments. 

So many young women suffer intense pain 
at the time of their monthly courses, and so 
many older ones have displacements of the 
pelvic organs, that I feel justified in stating 
that these troubles, so hard to bear and so 
difficult to cure by ordinary means, are easily 
affected and permanently cured by suggestion. 
This assertion is based on the actual results 
of treatment in a variety of difficult cases. 

61 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

Medical men are profoundly sceptical about 
the power of suggestion to produce organic 
changes in bodily tissue. This is quite natu- 
ral, and I wish to record some experiences 
bearing on this point. Owing to deformity 
or other disability, a child may be deprived 
of the use of a hand or foot, and practical 
paralysis may extend to the arm or leg. I 
do not now refer to cases of hysterical origin, 
but to defects which appear at birth or during 
the period of infancy. Orthopedics may do 
much to correct such defects; but if, by 
stimulating the plastic faculty, they could be 
set right without the use of surgical means, 
the change would be painless and more satis- 
factory. The natural tendency of growing 
animal structures to conform to normal pat- 
terns favors such a method of treatment; 
and the cases cited below offer some reason 
to think that it might succeed. 

The first case of the kind which I at- 
tempted to help was that of a boy about five 
years old who had never had the use of his 
left hand and arm. The fingers were closely 
doubled over the thumb within the palm, 
and the wrist so bent that the knuckles of 
the clenched fist were brought very close to 
the fore-arm. The elbow was also bent so 

62 



Organic Disease 

that the palsied hand rested against the boy's 
chest near the axilla of the left shoulder. 
The bones were less developed than those 
of its mate, and the baby muscles yielding 
and soft. It was possible to grasp the hand 
and partially straighten the joints, but the 
boy could not move them in the natural 
way. We stood by a window while I ex- 
amined the crippled member; and the child, 
who was fond of animals, became intently 
interested in watching some puppies playing 
on the lawn. While his attention was thus 
diverted and absorbed, I took advantage of 
the opportunity to suggest that the limb 
move. It obeyed : the fingers partially ex- 
tended, the wrist began to unbend, and the 
arm itself distinctly moved from the shoulder. 
Of course, the fixed position was resumed in 
a moment ; but the boy was not aware that 
the limb had made what was probably its 
first attempt to function. This experiment, 
which gave me courage, was followed by a 
variety of tests to see if without extraneous 
aid he could do anything with the hand ; but 
no prehensile power was manifest. I began 
to treat the case at once, and soon the flabby 
muscles began to act slowly and surely. 
The progress of the change was much like 

63 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

that by which a well-formed infant acquires 
motion and use. In fact, this part of the 
child's structure was still infantile and wholly 
untrained. At the end of three months he 
was able to grasp and hold light objects, — a 
sheet of paper, a pencil, a small stick, etc., — 
and could touch different parts of his own 
body and mine by reaching out the lame 
hand. A few months later he began to use 
awkwardly a fork and spoon in that hand, 
held one rein with it when riding a pony, 
and used it to remove things from his 
pocket. Strength gradually increased as 
time went on ; and at length the entire 
disability was overcome, and the anatomy 
educated. Now that he has grown to man- 
hood, the hand and arm serve him for all 
practical uses ; and the difference in size be- 
tween the left and right upper extremities 
would attract no attention unless one were 
looking for it. 

My next case was that of a lady who had 
a fall when she was two years old, and lost 
the use of one leg. During thirty years she 
had never taken a natural step with the hurt 
foot. At the time I first saw her, this 
person wore an appliance of steel straps 
which passed under the arch of the lame 

64 



Motor Power Restored 

foot and upward on each side to the thigh. 
This contrivance supported and stiffened the 
weak limb, so that, with the aid of a cane, it 
would bear her weight while she sw T ung the 
other foot forward. Then she balanced, and 
pulled the lame side ahead a little, and in 
this clumsy fashion managed to imitate 
walking; but this mode of locomotion was 
unnatural, and made such unusual demands 
on the muscular system that there was a 
very one-sided development of the body, so 
that she could not stand or sit upright. 
Complete motor paralysis of the leg probably 
existed for a time after the hurt was re- 
ceived, and the accident happened when she 
was so young that she never learned to 
walk. I treated this case a long while with- 
out seeing any tangible results ; but at length 
signs of innervation began to appear, and, as 
she described the change in sensation, the 
muscles like a cage of wild beasts seemed 
struggling to break loose. This remark was 
a pointer; and, at the time of the next visit, 
I asked her to remove the brace. Then, 
after making the proper suggestion, I re- 
quested her to stand up without any 
mechanical support and step forward, ad- 
vancing the lame foot first. She complied ; 

65 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

and, although the movements were timid 
and awkward, she actually took a number of 
steps, and then returned to her chair. Re- 
peated efforts followed, and she made en- 
couraging progress in the use of her feet. 
On two different occasions she walked a 
considerable distance on the street with no 
apparent difficulty, and said that during these 
walks she actually forgot all about her lame- 
ness. The change exceeded my expecta- 
tions, and it seemed as if a thoroughgoing 
transformation were in sight. But alas for 
human frailty ! This patient lacked the 
energy and persistent grip to hold every 
advantage which insured success to my first 
patient. It was a constitutional defect, I 
suppose; for while all her hopes hung on 
the success of the experiment, and she longed 
to be well, she seemed unable to help her- 
self or use the power she had manifestly 
acquired. I tried repeatedly to arouse her 
latent activity ; but each time she fell back 
like a dead weight, and finally lapsed into 
the old habit of helplessness. 

A third case recently fell into my hands. 
This patient was a bright, restless little girl 
of five, who had " toed in " ever since she 
began to walk. The defect was very marked, 

66 



Malposition Corrected 

and may have been congenital, for her 
grandfather on the mother's side had it ; and 
a tendency to such deformity could be traced 
in her father's family. It is possible, too, 
that, while learning to walk, the child 
imitated her grandfather's step. The first 
treatment I gave in this case was very inter- 
esting. The girl evidently did not take in 
the situation or comprehend the purpose of 
what I attempted to do for her. She came 
to my rooms with her mother, whom I 
knew; and, after making the necessary ex- 
amination and inquiries, I seated her on a 
hassock of such height that her two feet 
rested squarely on the floor, and might be 
easily rotated on the heels ; the toes, of 
course, turned in. She held in her lap a 
large bouquet, and during the treatment was 
absorbed in pulling it to pieces, and scatter- 
ing the petals on the carpet, so that she paid 
no attention to me. I sat behind her, and 
her mother and I watched the feet while I 
made the suggestion. In about seven min- 
utes the right began to rotate outward with 
a hesitant motion, and come to rest at the 
proper angle, then a like change came to 
the left foot; and the deformity was cor- 
rected. Did the child get up and walk 

67 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

about, and keep her feet in the proper posi- 
tion ? Yes, she did just this at my request, 
but it would be assuming too much to sup- 
pose that the power of the wrong habit had 
been broken - y for such a cure as that implies 
would be nothing short of a miracle, and I 
never work miracles. The meaning of what 
took place was that the girl without know- 
ing what she did, in the ordinary sense, 
obeyed the suggestion promptly ; that is to 
say, her plastic occipital faculty did so. 
She realized, when she tried, that it was then 
easy to walk about and " toe out " ; but she 
did not understand how the change was 
brought about, and, when left to herself, her 
little feet forgot their duty, and lapsed into 
the old way. But, after a number of sub- 
sequent treatments, the muscles and other 
tissues conformed to the new requirements, 
the habit changed, and the correct position 
of the two feet became established without 
mechanical aid or discomfort to the patient. 
A young woman who suffered for several 
months with a sore lung contracted, during 
the time, a habit of dropping one shoulder, so 
that it fell more than an inch below the 
level of the opposite one. A surgeon whom 
she consulted suggested alternate hot and 

68 



Cases of Deafness 

cold baths to tone up the muscles, electric- 
ity, and massage, none of which she tried. 
I suggested that the shoulder be brought into 
place by her own natural faculty of repair. 
The stimuli made the power kinetic, and she 
recovered in a few days. This trouble, by 
the way, was not hysterical. 

A number of persons have tried my 
method of suggestion for the cure of deaf- 
ness with success. A lady twenty-one years 
of age, whose hearing was impaired when 
she had scarlatina at the age of six, re- 
covered the lost power in less than a month 
after I took her case. She did not hear at 
all with the right ear, and the left was very 
dull. Specialists had examined the case, 
and said there was no help for her because 
there was closure of the Eustachian tubes. 
A gentleman, whose hearing began to grow 
dull in 1864, applied to me for treatment 
thirty-three years later. At that time he did 
not hear my ordinary voice unless he was 
expecting me to speak, and watched my face : 
this was mere lip-reading. He could not 
hear the clear tick of a watch held two 
inches away from his right ear, but the left 
was somewhat more sensitive. I treated 
this case nearly three months, averaging 

69 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

three treatments each two weeks. He 
could then hear distinctly ordinary talk in 
the next room with the door closed between, 
and could distinguish between light raps 
which I made with my pocket knife on 
metal, on wood, and on a book, at a distance 
of thirty feet. An aged lady, who was under 
treatment for insomnia and indigestion, was 
also very " hard of hearing " ; and the defect 
had been increasing ever since she first 
noticed it twelve years before. The other 
troubles were cured within a reasonable 
time, and the deafness also. A middle-aged 
gentleman, whose ears had been affected for 
about two years, had become quite deaf, — 
one of the cases in which "the cause was 
not appreciable." Suggestion restored his 
hearing in about three months. 

I have had considerable experience in 
treating affections of the eyes, and have 
found suggestion very helpful in many cases 
of weakness of sight, nerve fatigue, strain, 
muscular trouble, etc., which are grouped 
under the inclusive term asthenopia. Several 
children, whose eyes oculists had pro- 
nounced astigmatic and in need of glasses, 
received my treatment, and escaped the 
doom of the specialist. Three children be- 

70 



Treating the Eyes 

longing to the same family, after being under 
my care awhile, were re-examined by the 
oculist who discovered the astigmatism, and 
pronounced entirely free from that defect of 
vision. Had he made a mistake ? I have 
often cured headaches for students by treat- 
ing their eyes. I have not been able to help 
chronic congestion of the eyelids or a case 
of fistula in the lachrymal apparatus which I 
treated. An epileptic boy had choreic at- 
tacks, during which his eyeballs rolled up 
and down in a painful manner. This affec- 
tion was removed by my suggestion. I have 
also cured a number of cases of what patients 
called neuralgia of the eyes, but the seat of 
pain was really in the orbit. 

Very little need here be said about rheu- 
matism, neuralgia, neuritis, etc., in which 
pain is so large a factor, because I have 
already considered these cases at length in a 
paper on " Suggestion without Hypnotism," 
which was read before different sections of 
the Society for Psychical Research, and pub- 
lished in " Proceedings," Part XXX., June, 
1896. It was also reprinted in a pamphlet 
which is accessible. But I have more to 
say about the abolition of pain which was 
the subject of that paper ; and for this pur- 

71 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

pose I will describe a case with which to 
illustrate my point. A few years ago I at- 
tended a middle-aged lady who for ten years 
had suffered periodical attacks of pain in a 
nasal nerve under the right eye. The seat 
of the pain was so small a tract that I could 
easily cover it with the ball of my thumb. 
These attacks occurred every two or three 
weeks, and so completely prostrated the 
sufferer that she scarcely recovered from the 
effects of one before the next was due. 
The pain usually came on in the morning, 
increased in violence during the day and 
succeeding night, became exquisite anguish 
the second twenty-four hours, and gradually 
subsided on the third day. During its 
progress the pain extended by sympathy to 
the branches of the fifth nerve, and severe 
nausea and vomiting set in when it was at 
its height. The eighth day after I began 
treatment was the date for an attack; but 
she escaped it, and about two weeks later 
had one of moderate severity, which was the 
last. I kept myself informed about the case 
for a year after I took it ; and, although 
there were other neuralgic affections, this 
centre of intermittent agony was effectually 
inhibited. 

72 



Suppression of Pain 

In the treatment of pain by suggestion, 
two possible results should be kept in view. 
When the patient under treatment is actually 
suffering at the time, the first duty is to stop 
it by analgesia, as explained in " Suggestion 
without Hypnotism." This is temporary 
help, but does not necessarily cure. Pain 
has a physical cause, and cannot be per- 
manently banished until that cause is removed. 
So the second duty is to cure the bodily trouble, 
of which the pain is a symptom, by subsequent 
suggestions. In the case cited above, it was 
probably analgesis that enabled the lady to 
escape one attack; for, had the first few 
treatments cured the nerve, there would have 
been no subsequent pain at all in that spot. 

Some years ago a carpenter, who was work- 
ing with other men on a building, was seized 
almost daily with severe pain, and had to 
" lie off" for an hour to get over it. One 
of his comrades, who had some knowledge of 
my method, advised him to apply to me for 
help. The reply was that he couldn't afford 
to do so in work hours, and I couldn't cure 
the pain when he didn't have it. The joiner's 
logic was sound, if his premises were correct. 
Suggestion might have relieved an attack, but 
the best time to cure the trouble was when 
he was free from pain. 

73 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

But analgesia produced by suggestion is 
quite a different thing from anaesthesia pro- 
duced by a drug. Most persons know that 
ether makes one insensible to pain by stupefy- 
ing and deadening all sensation and producing 
unconsciousness. Under its benumbing in- 
fluence, one may submit to the severest sur- 
gical operation, and know nothing about it. 
Contrast with this the effect of analgesia. 
After it has been induced, the subject expe- 
riences no change of sensation. He does 
not become anaesthetic or unconscious. He 
retains full possession of all his powers, and 
can think clearly and move about as usual. 
The state of insensibility exists only in the 
nerves concerned in the operation, and does 
not involve the whole body as anaesthesis 
does ; nor does it deprive the affected nerves 
of any sensation but that of pain. Inhibition 
of pain is its sole achievement. A single 
case will illustrate. One summer morning 
a stranger called on me who was on her way 
to the dentist to have a firm molar tooth 
extracted, properly treated, and then replaced 
in the jaw. What her errand was you an- 
ticipate. I talked with her a few moments 
about the nature of this " pain-charmer," as 
she called it, then made a postponed sugges- 

74 



Analgesia 

tion to exempt her from suffering while the 
dentist operated. A passage in a note she 
sent me a few days later well describes the 
result. She wrote : " On reaching Dr. B.'s 
office, where memories of being dreadfully 
hurt revived, I could not assure myself that 
what you had done would really help me ; for 
I was not aware of any quieting effect. On 
the contrary, a shiver of dread ran through 
me as I took my place in the operating chair ; 
and for 3 moment I wished to take gas. 
Then I thought that would not be very brave 
or complimentary to you, and resolved not to 
play the fool. Dr. B. worked deliberately, 
and the tooth came hard. I was perfectly 
conscious of the whole operation, had a lively 
sense of the grip of the forceps as they pushed 
back the gum and tightened upon the root, 
of the tearing away from the flesh, and the 
wrench which brought the tooth out of the 
bony socket. But, to my amazement, there 
was no feeling at all of being hurt. In put- 
ting the tooth back again after it had been 
filled, the dentist hurt my mouth somewhat; 
but I didn't mind that, it was simply tedious. 
Another surprise came later. On reaching 
home, I expected to be much fatigued and 
prostrated, and have to go to bed ; but I really 

75 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

felt less overcome than I do after going to 
my dressmaker to be fitted." 

There are certain forms of emotional ex- 
citement that are morbid rather than health- 
ful, and tend, if not restrained, to pass from 
the impulsive stage into the chronic phase of 
habit. The more common of these excesses 
are fears of various kinds, hate more or less 
intense, different degrees of anger, from mild 
displeasure to vehement ebullitions of rage, 
and worry. As subjective experiences, they 
are hurtful to the individual ; and few people 
are wholly free from their bad effects. Each 
one of us probably knows persons in whom 
some particular event or object or demand 
arouses a frenzy of uncontrollable terror ; and 
these sallies of emotion obey not reason or 
will, but instantly burst forth when the pro- 
vocation arises, as a bull grows mad at sight 
of a red rag. A friend of mine confesses 
that, when he meets either of a number of 
gentlemen of his acquaintance, he is seized 
with an impulse to violently attack the man; 
and yet my friend is the pattern of courteous 
and quiet behavior. A business man once 
applied to me for treatment, who said that he 
could not remain many minutes in any public 
place, as a theatre or church, where a crowd 

76 



Emotional Excess 

hemmed him in, without feeling an over- 
mastering impulse to bolt out and rush away, 
lest he yell or do something else quite as 
outrageous. A lady friend tells me that 
she cannot lodge in a small or low-studded 
room without feeling a horrible dread that 
the walls will contract and crush her. A 
woman, who had been a cripple during girl- 
hood, said she hated and loathed every lame 
person she saw. Another woman, who had 
a very irascible temper, emitted from her 
person an offensive and pungent odor when- 
ever she had a fit of anger. How many 
persons, otherwise fitted to render valuable 
public service, are debarred from so doing by 
stage fright ? And worry, that unreasonable, 
unmoral state of the emotional life, — who has 
not known any of its slaves ? But the list 
need not be lengthened, since every reader 
can fill it out ad libitum. 

To understand the peculiar character of 
these habits and how they may be broken 
up, we must realize the two distinct elements 
that go to the making of them. With the 
passionate outbursts of feeling, which give 
the excitement vent, we are familiar; the 
reverberations of fear we have felt ; but we 
may never have noticed that the essential 

77 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

action begins in the nervous system, so that 
c< the general causes of the emotions are in- 
dubitably physiological." This statement is 
based on a theory announced by Professor 
James, of Harvard University, and Professor 
Lange, of Copenhagen, and known to psy- 
chologists as the James-Lange theory. It is 
thus outlined in James's " Psychology," vol. 
ii. pp. 449, 450 : — 

w Our natural way of thinking about these 
coarser emotions is that the mental percep- 
tion of some fact excites the mental affection 
called the emotion, and that this latter state 
of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. 
My theory, on the contrary, is that the bodily 
changes follow directly the perception of the ex- 
citing fact, and that our feeling of the same 
changes as they occur is the emotion. Common 
sense says : we lose our fortune, are sorry 
and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened 
and run ; we are insulted by a rival, are 
angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be 
defended says that this order of sequence is 
incorrect; that the one mental state is not 
immediately induced by the other; that the 
bodily manifestations must first be interposed 
between ; and that the more rational state- 
ment is that we feel sorry because we cry, 

73 



A New Theory 

angry because we strike, afraid because we 
tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or 
tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fear- 
ful, as the case may be. Without the bodily 
states following on the perception, the latter 
would be purely cognitive in form,— pale, 
colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We 
might then see the bear, and judge it best to 
run, receive the insult, and deem it right to 
strike; but. we should not actually feel afraid 
or angry." 

According to this theory, every emotion is 
conditioned on antecedent physical change, 
to which it is related, as the noise and smoke 
to the discharge of a gun. What our ears 
hear and what our eyes see inform us that 
a physical event has just occurred in the 
weapon. In like manner the emotional ex- 
citement we feel makes us aware of physical 
changes undergone by the body, and these 
constitute the noxious habit to be eradicated. 
In this same fact is to be seen the reason 
why personal will and moral suasion avail so 
little to change such habits, and why, on the 
contrary, they are amenable to suggestions of 
the occipital consciousness. 

Four of the patients who have made trial 
of my mode of suggestion for the cure of 

79 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

such habits have been already mentioned. 
Besides these, I treated a girl of twelve who, 
when addressed by strangers, either could not 
articulate a word in reply or hesitated and 
stammered in a way painful to witness. She 
talked fluently with members of her family 
and playmates, and there was no organic im- 
pediment of the vocal organs. What ailed 
her was stage fright. As soon as she saw an 
object of fear, — a stranger speaking to her, — 
her whole body would tremble, facial contor- 
tions would appear, and constriction of the 
vocal apparatus supervene. I find also in 
my book notes of the treatment of a talented 
pianist who was so " nervous," when he at- 
tempted to give a public performance, that 
his fingers twitched and he could not play ; 
of a young lady who had been carefully and 
expensively trained for opera singing, but had 
stage fright which so overmastered her when 
she came before an audience that the larynx 
was clutched, and she made a series of mor- 
tifying failures ; of a high-school boy whose 
trousers' legs shook so violently when he 
mounted the stage to declaim that he always 
forgot his piece ; of a girl in her teens whose 
excessive timidity caused her to break down 
in her class recitations ; of a lady who had 

80 



A Final Word 

been the victim of a " runaway " accident, 
and could take no more comfort in riding 
because, as she claimed, whenever she plucked 
up courage to enter a carriage, her fright 
seemed to bewitch the horse, and make him 
misbehave and upset the vehicle ; of another 
lady of thirty-five who, since she became 
of age, had suffered the torments of worry 
through fear of poverty ; and of a farmer, 
in comfortable financial circumstances, who 
had worried himself sick for the same reason. 
It is a pleasure to add that all of these cases 
were cured. 

This little volume has been written with a 
sincere desire to inform the public what sug- 
gestion in therapeutics is in actual practice, 
and what patients have reason to expect qf it 
in the present stage of development. As a 
method of cure, it has proved worthy to rank 
beside medicine, since the two seek to reach 
the same end. In its best phase, it is no 
ignorant, unskilled art, dependent on psychical 
cunning, to be practised by any person who 
has assurance and a little gumption. Fitness 
to use it with a good degree of success re- 
quires broad preparation and special education. 

All the collected evidence goes to show 
that suggestion is a powerful agent, whose 

81 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

possibilities and limits are not yet determined. 
Many scientists and physicians of first-rate 
ability are studying it, especially in European 
countries, so that new facts are discovered 
and new light is focussed upon it every day. 
And this educated investigation is a guarantee 
that it will soon be wrested from charlatans 
who juggle with it, and committed to the 
hands of persons who will use it solely for 
the good of their fellow-beings. 

Rightly administered, this art of healing 
has already produced remarkable results ; and 
these successes justify the hope and expecta- 
tion that, when better known, it will gain in 
public favor, inspire confidence, and come 
into more extensive use. Nor would the 
growth of psychical practice be injurious to 
the profession of medicine if, instead of scout- 
ing it, doctors would give it serious attention 
and adopt it in their own practice. Physi- 
cians, above all others, are the persons best 
fitted to make intelligent use of suggestion ; 
but, to be able to employ it with success, they 
must realize that the special knowledge and 
skill required are not like the qualifications 
which fit one to prescribe drugs or perform 
surgical operations. Suggestion does not con- 
sist in choosing out of the pharmacopoeia the 



Advantages of the Method 

remedies indicated or in arousing hope and will 
in a patient. If the definition herein given 
be correct, the doctor who would cure in this 
way must withhold drugs, and stimulate the 
recuperative energy of the patient by sending 
him an influence generated within his (the 
doctor's) own brain, and issued not by a fiat 
of his will, but by the authority vested in his 
occipital consciousness. 

It cannot be denied that in many respects 
this method has decided advantages ; and, 
surely, this way of making suggestions is an 
improvement on that of the hypnotists. 
Most persons dislike the idea of being sent 
into a trance which in any degree robs them 
of personal freedom or implies the surrender 
of the will into the keeping of another; 
and, whatever is claimed, there is no real 
hypnosis as long as the subject retains the 
power of choice. He must obey another will 
than his own, for the time being, in order to 
receive help : this is the gist, the sine qua non 
of hypnotism, implied in the statement of 
Professor Miinsterberg, "You can make the 
hypnotized subject do almost anything, but 
you cannot make him will to do it." Hyp- 
notic suggestion, its advocates confess, cannot 
succeed unless the attention and co-operation 

83 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

of the patients are secured ; and patients are 
often unable to contribute that much help, — 
the unconscious and the insane cannot, in- 
fants cannot, dumb animals cannot. But the 
method advocated in this monograph makes 
no such demands, and succeeds quite as well 
without them. Again, it is admitted that the 
hypnotizer, if unscrupulous, may take unfair 
advantage of a patient's helplessness, and do 
him harm. In a method without hypnotism, 
no such danger menaces the patient, because 
the suggested message is not addressed to his 
mind, but to thoughtless nerve centres ; and 
the patient does not surrender his freedom of 
choice and will at all. 

This is not the place to discuss reasons 
for believing in the plurality of conscious- 
ness or expound the scientific basis on which 
the hypothesis rests. In explaining the 
phenomena here considered, it has been 
offered uncritically as the indispensable for- 
mula by which to solve the main problem of 
suggestion; but it is no invention to meet 
the demands of the present occasion. The 
existence of more than one consciousness or 
self in each human being as a necessary 
mental outfit has gradually forced itself upon 
the attention of psychologists as a fact of 

84 



Credit to Worth 

first-rate importance, if proved, and of far- 
reaching consequences, if accepted. Many 
deep thinkers have studied it from time to 
time ; but the credit of collecting and classi- 
fying the evidence in the case into one 
consistent whole belongs by common con- 
sent to Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers, of 
Cambridge, England. At least a score of 
years ago this indefatigable worker on the 
frontier of psychical research began to elabo- 
rate his ingenious argument in a series of 
articles on " The Subliminal Self." Through 
his patient toil a mass of apparently unre- 
lated and quite useless psychological ma- 
terials have been assorted and fitted together, 
as the builders joined their blocks in the elder 
days of art, to compose a strong tower of 
evidence in support of his logical conclu- 
sions. This series of articles was printed 
as they severally appeared in the u Proceed- 
ings " of the Society for Psychical Research, 
where the curious may peruse them at their 
leisure, and trace for themselves the succes- 
sive steps of the author's reasoning. 

It is a pleasure to add that Mr. Myers has 
not yet laid away his brain in the museum 
and wiped his pen, but still pores over that 
mass of organic cells and neurous, intent on 

85 



Suggestion in Therapeutics 

finding out the secrets of man's mental life 
and reporting them to the world. A few of 
his latest utterances will make a fitting close 
to this monograph : " The chief reflection is 
that we are as yet but in a childish or rudi- 
mentary stage of our use of the human brain. 
That brain is, in truth (as some one has said), 
but c a virtual organ ' . . . which man is 
slowly learning to use, but with very little 
notion either of how it came to be what it is 
or of what it ultimately may be. . . . Some 
naturalists agree that much of the savage's 
brain-power must lie dormant, — must some- 
how be a mere reserve for the later calls of 
a more complex existence. If this be ad- 
mitted, we must surely go on to admit that 
a large proportion of the brain's capacity is 
dormant still. I do not mean to predict that 
our race will necessarily include in the future 
individual minds more powerful than any 
minds in the past. . . . Yet the important 
fact is that the great spirits of the past made 
use only of certain portions of the human 
brain which had, through some historic cause, 
been the first to be developed. . . . May not 
that effortless concurrent utilization of all 
elements of the personality [which is con- 
ceivably possible in the future] hold ulti- 

86 



Using the Whole Brain 

mately somewhat the same relation to our 
present painful thought as multiplex teleg- 
raphy holds to the old, slow, and single trans- 
mission along the wire ? " 



87 



LIST OF DISEASES. 

The following list includes the popular 
names of most of the maladies whose treat- 
ment is mentioned in the foregoing pages : 
aboulia ; affections of the eyes, stomach, and 
throat; alcoholism, amblyopia, amenorrhoea, 
asthma, bruises, burns, chlorosis, chorea, 
chronic diarrhoea, claustrophobia (fear of 
spaces), constipation, deafness, diabetes, dip- 
somania, diseases of the bladder, dysmenor- 
rhoea, dyspepsia, emotional excesses, enuresis, 
grippe, gastric affections, habit diseases, hay 
fever, headache, hysteria, hysterical contract- 
ure and paralysis, inflamed eyelids, insomnia, 
intermittent diarrhoea, intermittent headache, 
jaundice, liver complaints, malformations, 
malpositions, mania, melancholia (incipient), 
morphine habit, mumps, nerve fatigue, ner- 
vous disorders, nervous prostration, neuralgia, 
neurasthenia, neuritis, paralysis, piles, rheu- 
matism, scarlatina, sciatica, shingles, snoring, 
sore joints, spinal affections, sprains, stage 
fright, stammering, St. Vitus's dance, tonsil- 
litis, toothache, uterine fibroids, varicose 
veins, whooping-cough, writer's cramp. 



88 



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